Quit +/or Fight

Sub Pop;
2005

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In 2003, Holopaw's self-titled debut prodded the overlap between vague electronic twitterings and scrappy folk tradition-- its follow-up, Quit +/or Fight, sees Holopaw striking a slightly more symbiotic medium, the line between their blips and strums now appropriately faded. Quit +/or Fight may lack the immediate melodic punch of the band's debut-- it forsakes pristine strums for skewering electric guitar and scrappier arrangements-- but what the record sacrifices in warmth, it makes up for in atmospherics. Quit +/or Fight is Holopaw's first Christmas record, alternately sweet and grim, an impeccable homage to snow and weird, wintry disembodiment. These songs are dark and cold, and their August release-- sent squirting out into an expanse of rotting, hundred-plus days, drifting over boiled trash and limp, floppy gardens-- proves oddly apt. All the chills you'll feel will finally do some good.

Holopaw's juxtapositions may be less striking now, but the results are more cohesive. Still, Quit takes a little extra time to settle into: Without being purposefully difficult, Quit +/or Fight can still be willfully (and successfully) obtuse, scrappy and determinably distanced from the shiny perfection of Holopaw. Since 2003, the band has added another guitar player (Tom Reno of Florida post-rockers the Mercury Program), and with members currently scattered from their former home base of Gainesville, FL, Holopaw has adopted the increasingly popular U.S.P.S. method of sound recording, drifting ideas back and forth from producer Mike Pecchio's studio in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn to Philadelphia, Florida, and elsewhere. Whimsical and charmingly slack, Quit +/or Fight harnesses that distance to create a record intensely sympathetic to gaps in place and time.

Opener "Losing Light" is all pause and thumping drums, punctuated by prickly guitar lines and overdubbed vocals-- singer/lyricist John Orth (also of Isaac Brock side-project Ugly Cassanova) encapsulates late December with awkward, crushing intimacy, his voice drifting from half-whisper to full-song: "The tree from the house to the curb/ Tinsel pathways to the yard...We're losing light/ The holiday, whittled down to this/ Plenty of time winding out." Orth hits all the seasonal notes, from sugar plums to corduroys to fake snow to space heaters, but also manages to capture (at times, majestically) the glorious, scarf-wrapping loneliness inherent to deep freeze.

"Velveteen (All Is Bright.)" is painfully transformative and one of the band's strongest tracks to date: Michael Johnson's cymbal swats crack and whimper like icicles shattering, filled in by Tobi Echevarria's thick, loping bass (think snowshoes) and Jeff Hays' wispy, hot-breath-on-cold-air pedal steel. Orth coos earnestly about Santa Claus steering his reindeer straight to the bottom of Lake Superior ("Without a thought he said 'Go Dasher, Go Dancer'/ And they dropped their heads, disappeared into the cloudbank...Those silver bells didn't make a sound when they fell to rest at the bottom of Superior"), which seems like a precious conceit, until you stop thinking about it and just listen to his poem: slowly, the song tumbles towards a thundering climax, all heavy, honking synths, and guitar push, Orth bellowing fervently "All is calm/ All is bright/ And they're dragging the lake with peppermint hooks, pink rushing to frostbite tips"-- before slinking back into the band's signature closing hush.

Unsurprisingly, Quit +/or Fight is also a breakup record, heavy with heartache and dark, belly-punching bits. Orth always had a photographer's sense of detail and light, and here, watching becomes an essential thematic reprise. In "Curious", a lover is shakily peered at from a clearing, and in "Losing Light", Orth's eyes turn to a sleeping body: "I watch you like some newborn kid/ Curling your fingers in and out of fists/ Run my thumb across your hip." Things aren't good ("I'm lost to you"), but Orth is veiled and careful with his details, immersing listeners in the fuzzy, shaking haze of endings.

Musically, the band stretches its muscle: "3-Shy-Clubs" funnels mysterious percussive smacks into a groove-heavy bossa nova rhythm, while "Curious" folds in bass clarinet and sinewy falsetto. The title track originally appeared as a FOUND Magazine (publisher of found notes, letters, photographs, and stories) song of the month, and features a mess of snagged lyric crumbs, cobbled together into a shockingly logical whole (some of which seems like an eerily apropos PTSD response to military propaganda: "OK, so I'm no longer/ The best of the best/ No longer defending the U.S.A.") Still, the track, which mixes tinkling bells with steel guitar caws and high, layered harmonies, has moments of chilly clarity: "You've done enough/ Quit and/or Fight," Orth implores. It's the perfect title for a band that demanded self-evolution, and got exactly what it wanted.